Zardnaar said:
So thats where I am atm. Trying to avoid the following.
1. Magic item Christmas tree.
2. Magic item supermarkets.
3. Excessive min/maxing.
4. Boosting exploration and social. Eg finding vendors, convincing them to sell. Contacts and sidequests.
5. Guaranteeing basic items are available.
6. Avoiding stacking abuse with non attunement items. No you cant buy 10 clockwork amulet.
7. Magic item supermarkets in essence obsolete 90% of magic items and heavily incentive to internet theory craft. Had enough of that in 3E.
Anyway your thoughts on frequency, power levels etc of items?
Your list is a bit confusing as you start it as what you try to avoid but some points sound like things you actually want...
1. I use attunement to avoid this effect, plus the basic body-slot idea (max 1 amulet around your neck, max 1 ring per hand...)
2. Even in the magic-items-heavy 3e era I never had sellers with more than a handful of magic items for sale, and typically randomly generated
3. As before, randomly generating which items are available helps against maxing
4. Yes, definitely
5. For me the only "basic" magic items really are healing potions, I don't guarantee anything else
6. I can always add an attunement requirement to an item, for me DMG items are just examples
7. See 2. and 3.
Most importantly, I don't think 5e has a standard, it's pretty open in how the DM handles magic items, so I might do it differently in each game.
One item every 2 encounters is good, just like many other ways.
Most of the times in 5e I have been running games at Tier 1 anyway, so I just sticked to consumable magic items, but in one-shot games I have also given out permanent magic items without worry, because they are as permanent as the one-shot...
Otherwise my ideal from previous editions is few permanent magic items per PC/NPC, some of which are "signature" items which grow in power with the character, reflecting what they do and happens to them, and don't work fully when used by others. It's much wider than just attunement and helps with many of those concerns.
